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To say -all- voted to spite a united Ireland / SF is a bit simple and simple stories can kill here.
Oh don't get me wrong I'm not saying that the Unionist Brexit vote was driven by hardening the border. My point was that surely an NI resident Brexit voter would see that either a border would be required, otherwise NI would be a backdoor into the UK, meaning all them forrins would be passing through. If the options were hardening of the NI/ROI border, or a sea border. I'm guessing that hardening the NI/ROI border would be a nice bonus.
Would be interested to hear the opinions of those you've spoken with though. It's difficult to hear opinions from the 'other side' which aren't just angry sub-140 character rants online.
mmccarthy-
1 Taxi Driver: He voted for economic reasons, nice man, saw the battlefields from WW1 (as you know many NI people fought there) and he didn't want peace endangered
2: Security Guy: I think voted for NHS money, "sure all politicians lie" but I think had I gotten to him in 2016 I may have convinced him to vote otherwise
3: Another security guy: Into football happy NI team is doing well and racism fought hard, I think for him a little bit of a identity/not sure vote. I think he really felt bad when I told him about problems for us EU furrin's
4: Lawyer from North Belfast, involved in peace work, went to EU many times feels European. Weird he rehashed the "EU bad on Greece" (well EU commission was, yes, but also huge debts and cooking Euro books and EU parliament writes off debts, complex story) and "UK helped Ireland a lot with loans, not EU" (yeah to protect their own banks as well... so... interests involved) but he also felt disappointed so many people think ordinary unionists are bigots, tried to ban the DUP from his cafe.
I found it a bit weird he was still on the "but the EU" should budge side, there we disagreed, but clearly he's also unhappy with the Sea Border and I can understand that too. And he's worried about the peace here, he says unionist "community" (THAT word hah) is very angry, and was there with his son.
Not easy times. I guess us furrin's belong nowhere in a way, but at least everyone talks to us?
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NI is a back door into the UK. This was clear from the first mention of Brexit and obviously the hard border issue raised its head then. The DUP fought under ‘keep us British’ not realising that the government would renege on its promises once the government didn’t require the DUPs votes. Now we are left in a place, betwixt and between, and the back door remains open.
Interestingly, it looks like the Irish Sea border will be on the mainland for immigration issues at the moment as people can’t travel from NI to the mainland without hindrance.
The fright difficulties may drive freight into the South from the mainland and onwards to the EU - time will tell if that is a workable solution.
JWestland
TGR
I've spoken to several I don't think it's that simple.
Sure any ones that will vote tuv instead of DUP are hardliners. Feck em.
And it's also definitely true Brexit voting areas were far from the UK border on Ireland.
And yep it massively backfired.
But the Unionist papers were not that honest about Brexit and here too some people saw it as low risk, economic reward.
To say -all- voted to spite a united Ireland / SF is a bit simple and simple stories can kill here.
Still waiting on Jim Allister's head to explode from rage, scanners style 😁